//------------------------------// // XVII - Lightning Calls // Story: Transcendence // by Corejo //------------------------------// Lightning Calls One month remained. Rain poured over the meadow from obsidian clouds like a flood from endless caverns in the sky.  Unlike her father’s, they were natural—by the Everfree’s standards, anyway.  To Scootaloo their size and ferocity made her father’s storms look like gentle Spring showers.  She smirked at the thought, but then squinted at the sky, a tremor in her heart that matched those within the black, swelling bellies above. She was alone in the cloud-darkened early afternoon—as it was long before her father returned from work.  Time ticked away too quickly in the past months, and results had been scarce.  Risks had to be taken.  And they had been taken many times before.  With too much at stake, she lifted herself from the drowning meadow and into the sky. The blanket above flashed its warning, much grander than Scootaloo was used to.  You can do this.  She pulled into a loop beneath the cloud, her wings connected with the its underside, and the twinge of lightning worked its way down into them in a building flame.  It engulfed her like hellfire and turned the icy, stabbing rain to steam when it touched her skin. Relax. She fell away from the cloud, centered on the thought in defiance of her body’s screaming protests.  Rain droplets that fell beside her slowed, then climbed into the sky above as she outpaced them, tugging filaments of static away from her. The lighting within her thrashed about like a frenzied tiger against the bars of a cage.  She clenched her teeth and went rigid to contain it, but the bars bent.   The lightning coiled out of her skin like a wire that had been wrapped tightly around a spool and then suddenly released.  Scootaloo grunted.  She flicked her wings to expel any lingering traces of lightning that still hid within. She let her heart settle in her chest by circling just above the treetops.  Calling lightning wasn’t so much a physically grueling trick as it was mental.  As her father had put it long ago, dancing with death was unnerving, to say the least. A sudden, deafening clap sent her tumbling into a tree.  Branches lashed at her like whips as she fell through, snapped and torn down with her.  Mud squelched against her chest, cold and wet, and sucked the wind from her.  She gasped like a drowning foal breaking water, heaving in spite of a stabbing pain that refused her lungs air.  Lightning played brilliant reflections off the water that bogged the forest floor, snapshotting an enormous tree split down the middle by the lightning strike.  It creaked and moaned under its weight like a dying pony bewailing its fate before crashing to the ground, mere hoofsteps from where she lay.   Despite the profoundness of it, she felt nothing; the wanton destruction of her training was normal—routine.  She sat up and giggled at that fact, humoring the thought of when she would be the unfortunate victim.   The sky lit up to a crash of lightning exploding another tree, and she took it as a signal to try again. Her muscles complained, and her brain cried out against the coming torture.  But she knew better than to listen.  Giving in to their calls was weakness.  Doubt was her worst enemy, and every word they spoke dripped with it.  Ignoring them was her only option for success. She gritted her teeth and blasted into the sky.  The ground came close, but the lightning wrenched itself from her as if it had a mind of its own.  Scootaloo roared as loud as the thunder itself. Why was she even out here?  It was hopeless. She landed in a puddle of mud beneath the elm to collect her saddlebags.  The feeling of drenched cotton around her midriff was uncomfortable, but the taste of carrying it in her mouth would have been more so: strapping it up already left a nasty aftertaste in her mouth. Wings poised to carry her home, Scootaloo looked toward where Ponyville would have been if not for the thick curtain of rain.  Visions of home swept through her mind, but were hardly appealing—not right now.  She needed progression, not comfort.  Yet, at that moment, comfort was exactly what she longed for most. She looked up at the underside of the tree, the dark green that pattered like a thousand drums beneath the rain.  Droplets here and there dribbled down into little puddles at her hooves.  She gazed into one and saw herself staring back through the ripples.  Teeth clenched, she stamped a hoof into it, but then closed her eyes and sighed. Patience.  She repeated the word in her head, slow and steady—let it fill her.  Focus. She took a deep breath, held it, and let it go, raising her head to let a new dribble of icy rain run down her face and wash away the mud.  The chill was beyond what she would have normally considered bearable, but it had a calming effect.  It was out there—her mark was out there.  She need only reach out a bit further and take it, just like the rainboom.  The lightning would bow.  She just needed to find out how. A smile crept across her face and she turned to loosen her saddlebags, but there was the distant wail of a bell—four faint but distinct tolls. Scootaloo snapped to.  Crap!  Her father would be getting off work soon.  With haste, she shot through the blinding rain for Ponyville.  She landed upon the Town Hall porch much harder than she would have liked, almost cracking the floorboards, but her timing couldn’t have been more perfect; her father had just stepped out the front door of town hall.  He turned from closing the door and raised a brow at her.  She returned a false smile.  Hopefully, he wouldn’t suspect anything thanks to the rain over Ponyville itself. “What’s up with you?” he asked, his tone belying the blank expression he wore. “Just, uh, warming up some before you got out.”  Her smile widened, strained.  “Come on, let’s go!” she added while leaping into the air in hopes that excitement would help cover her tracks. “Alright, alright, relax.  I’m coming.  I don’t know how you have this much energy.” The rain intensified as they flew toward the heart of the storm over the meadow.  Scootaloo was glad that he hadn’t suspected anything, but she could feel that he was worried, his face as grave as the clouds ahead were black.  He had told her how much he disliked the Everfree’s clouds—too rampant, as he put it.  It was for this reason that their practices had shortened over the last few months.  And why Scootaloo chose to brave it alone without his knowing. “This one’s pretty bad, Scoot,” he yelled over the rain.  “It’s a lot worse than the ones before.” Yeah, she knew that already, her heart beating fierce like a stampede of cattle.  Alone it didn’t worry her in the slightest, but with her father present it was just the opposite for some reason.  She did her best not to show fear. The storm beckoned them in with a blinding flash.  Thunder rolled away like a freight train into the artificial night as pockets of the cloud lit up in scattered frenzy—a gesture of loathing for the intruders it desired to end once and for all. Scootaloo and Tyco steeled themselves against its gnashing teeth.  They looped underneath in tight formation to tickle its underside, provoking the beast.  It filled Scootaloo with its rage, the charge it spewed forth like the rain from its bowels.  Lightning thrashed about inside with the fury of a tiger and the heat of flame.  Muscles tensed to hold it fast.  Steam wafted from her drenched, falling figure. Hold it together! she pleaded her body.  Come on!  Skin and bone fought to contain the monster within.  Teeth clenched.  Silk-like threads of energy hissed between the hairs of her coat, tethering her to the droplets of rain falling beside her.  They became thick like flickering, forked snake tongues reaching out to taste freedom. Again.  The duo looped beneath again, stealing away the cloud’s power.  Scootaloo wrestled with its spasms and jerkings, striving for a harmony to subdue the unseen flames.  One.  Ten.  Twenty times.  Still the storm refused to bow. Hatred beyond reason resurged the torrent, doubling its effort to drown them out like sewer rats.  But they were defiant—just as unwilling to submit.  A particularly savage bolt laid waste to the forest below only brought them a moment’s pause. Scootaloo wiped her bangs out of her eyes.  A futile but compulsory effort.  Her heart had settled after its initial panic of returning with her father.  His finesse reassured her of his guardianship amidst the surrounding chaos.  She gave him a glance, though could hardly make out his figure through the sheeted rain.  Somehow, she sensed he was on edge—not for the danger that flashed about them, but for accomplishment.  He was always optimistic, but equally realistic.  With only a month until the auditions, there were cracks in his façade.  It riddled his voice. “This storm’s getting worse, Scoot,” he shouted nigh inaudibly over the rain. Scootaloo nodded with little regard for whether or not he saw.  It could get ten, a hundred, a thousand times worse than this for all she cared.  Time was of the essence.  And walls always fell if hit hard enough.   She shot upward to tackle her obstacle head on, but her father shouted again.  “Scoot!”  She stopped.  He had come closer, close enough to see the concern on his face. “This storm’s too strong to practice with right now!  There’s too much rain to control anything!  We’re not going to get anywhere!  We’ll only get ourselves hurt!” Or worse.  She shook the thought away.  Great success comes at great risk.  She would never progress without putting her nose to the grindstone as she had the rainboom.  But if his constant reminder of the rain’s effect on containing the lightning was true, then she needed to do something about that. Memories of how pegasi scattered clouds over Ponyville flitted through her mind like leaves in the wind.  They kicked and punched them into more manageable chunks.  But that would take way too long.  She would need something bigger—something to blast it all away. A sonic rainboom might do the trick. The rainboom she had done the day her father first showed her how to call lightning came to mind.  The way it had blown a hole in the cloud like dynamite.  That would work. Scootaloo shot up through the cloud like a rocket for the moon.  A cry from her father was barely noticeable over the roaring thunder.   She flew blind, the bowels of the beast darker than moonless night.  Lightning lit the swells of vapor with malice.  Just as quickly as she had entered, she broke free of the thunderhead.  Contrails followed her into the high atmosphere like claws reaching up to drag their prey back down.  She stalled above the sea of darkness and let gravity draw her into a swan dive. The tearing wind was familiar upon her face, like icicles to her rain-soaked skin.  The pain made her smile; she was on home ground now. Almost instantly, the cone formed and narrowed about her.  It began glowing with its own light—vivid purple—as it unravelled at her hooftip, playing off the swirling shadows of the cloud’s inner mass.  She stared it down as she had that day so long ago, teeth gritted.  Nothing would stand in her way. The thread snapped.  Everything fell away into black and white, and the resistance of the universe was washed away as if she had plunged headlong into an ocean.  All was silent, except a faint hissing. Over her shoulder, Scootaloo saw a gaping hole in the cloud expanding like a sinkhole into the clear grey of an afternoon sky.  Lightning arced through the open space and skittered beneath the wound. Below, the cloud was still intact, its bulk far too enormous for a single rainboom to have cleared.  Sparks bounced around behind the veil and wormed their way past her.  Some lashed out like snakes from invisible warrens.  They sunk their teeth into the meat of her wings and wouldn’t let go. She burst through the belly of the cloud to a thunder of its anger, and the world returned in sight and sound as she slowed to let the sound barrier reclaim her.  Tyco met her halfway between ground and sky, and both landed in the marsh.  His frown was as fierce as the cloud itself. “What the hell was that about!?” Scootaloo felt the pangs of his worry, but they were stifled by revelation.  She shook herself from head to tail, sending sparks and rainwater helterskelter.  Residual traces still glowed within her like kindling.  She had been doing it all wrong from the beginning. “Scoot!  Listen to me!” She knew the chastisement that would be waiting for her, but she had to try again.  His shouts were again lost to the storm in her dash skyward.  The crater her rainboom had made was slowly reforming, as if the curling, twisting lightning was a dozen needles sewing it back together.   Good. She would need more cloud to practice on. Far above the anvil-head she flew.  She paused in the thin atmosphere to gaze down at it, calculate her dive.  An angle would give her the most time within the cloud, maximizing the charge she could draw from it.  A moment’s focus prepared her, and she dove. She started out in a nose dive to build initial speed, just enough for the cone to form as the beast swallowed her whole.  Lightning ran alongside her on the other side of the veil like wolves behind brush waiting to strike.  The faster she became, the more the cone narrowed, the closer they dared come.  The cone flared purple with the power of a comet, and the lightning again nipped at her wingtips. The world white-washed away when she broke the sound barrier, a fire building inside, slow and steady.  Rather than riding upon the grace of air that was supersonic flight, she powered her wings harder, in hopes that higher speeds would draw more in.   Even in the blackness she could see and feel her sight smearing around the edges.  The fire within her breast, separate from the thunder’s flames, burned like a furnace packed with dry leaves.  It billowed out to wage war against the chilling rain and wrestle the thunder within. She dared a glance behind her.  Thunder danced like spider webs through the tunnel she had bored and swatted at her tail as if it were a toy.  It was chasing her. She tore free of the cloud, still gazing over her shoulder in hopes that it would follow.  White like the fangs of a lion, it reached out from the hole, grappling with her tail and slowly inching downward to clamp its jaws around her.   Never had a smile so wide swept across Scootaloo’s face.  Her heart fluttered.  She refocused on the ground, seeing it grow large and defined, and the pony who stood gazing up at her.  Though a small figure, she could see the wonder in his eyes, the suspense in his raised forehoof, the hope in his partly agape mouth. All at once, everything felt right.  The roiling flames inside her danced in chaotic harmony.  The silence of the supersonic world rang an undertone to the hiss of her charge—her gateway to the divine.  Black and white and shades of grey befriended the absence of touch.  All was at peace in this hollow yet full dimension, this world of her design. And it was hers alone. Her smile cracked, slowly letting forth a giggle that had welled up from her belly—foalish and playful.  She let it break free and sound into the silence of her world.  It washed through her like a tide upon a shore, wetting the beaches of her desires. It splashed upon the earth far below and receded to her ocean of life that she had only just touched with the tip of her hoof.  She watched its ripple ride undiminished into the distance.  Slowly, she pulled back from the waters, let the lesser world again take hold. The thunder redoubled its roars, as if to make up for her deafness to it moments ago, and the ground lurched upward as color filled her vision.  She spread her wings wide and thrust them earthward with a single, powerful stroke. Lightning warped about her and snapped between her wingtips.  It fired at the ground below and rebounded up through her into the sky.  A hotter flame had never before touched her skin. In an instant, before she knew what had happened, the cold chill of mud embraced her like a friend. The rain poured.  The wind blew.  Scootaloo sighed. The lingering traces of her world escaped on her breath, burning away like mist beneath a rising sun. “Scoot!” She blinked to, shaking her head, before looking up in the direction of her father’s voice.  She was almost neck deep into the earth, unable to move her legs or wings. “Scoot!”  She felt a hoof plunge into the mud by her chest and wrap underneath.  It heaved her from the sucking muck and brought her into the embrace of another hoof and a warm, albeit soaking wet, body.   “You did it, Scoot!” he said.  “You did it!  Haha!” She did.  She definitely did.  The thought was almost mind numbing.  For so long she had fought head-on against the lightning, only for the answer to lie in outsmarting it.  Her father was able to do it one way, but she was not him.  She was her own pony capable of her own abilities.  If only she weren’t so stubborn, the idea might have struck her earlier, unlike the rainboom.  But that didn’t matter; it was hers, as was the lightning. Somehow, the rainboom and lightning felt intertwined, like they were meant for each other, designed as such—that her combined stunt wasn’t merely a fluke.  Maybe there was more to it. “Scoot...”  His voice was low, laden with awe.  His hug had evaporated into an absent hoof about her forelegs, which dangled in the air.  She looked at him, and his face reflected his speech.  He was staring at her flank.  Slowly, as if her head resisted the motion, she followed his gaze. Golden wings shone through streaks of rain-washed mud like an unearthed treasure. Their bases honed to a needlepoint haloed by a silver mach cone thick with futile resistance. It spread out toward her tail as hair-thin lines to envelop the wings, which fanned inward and seemed compressed by supersonic flight. Every feather was distinct from its kin, and grew in size and brilliance toward the wing tips like shining swords raised in victory. Scootaloo stared for what felt like years at what she finally came to realize was her cutie mark. “I knew you could do it.” She squinted up at him through the rain.  His hair was matted down and dripping, coat just as worse for wear, but he smiled.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime smile—brief in all its glory, but never forgotten.  Such love and pride could never be washed away by the downpour of rain or future memories. She would hold that smile forever in her heart. And it was for that smile that she returned one; though, hers grew into a wide, mischievous grin.  She wanted to see it again, and the only way to do that was practice. She had a month to go, and a lot of work in between. [Author's Note: Thanks to Belligerent Sock for his review of this chapter.] [Onward and upward!]